Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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AKA: Arbeitskreis Physik und Abrüstung

AKA 5: Weltraumrüstung und neue Technologien

AKA 5.2: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 17:00–17:30, H45

Increasing Nuclear Stability with Shared Missile Launch Surveillance — •Geoffrey Forden — MIT

India and Pakistan, some of the world's most recent nuclear powers, periodically suffer intense political conflicts that often threaten to escalate into armed conflicts. We know from the experiences of other nuclear powers that the risks of an accidental nuclear detonation are greatly increased under these circumstances. If such an accident occurred in the subcontinent, would the unfortunate country jump to the conclusion that it had been attacked or would it wait until it could be sure it was an accident? Unfortunately, we believe that it would lead to catastrophic consequences. We propose a globally shared constellation of satellites that would monitor the launches of ballistic missiles and increase nuclear stability by reassuring all nations that tragedy would not escalate to a nuclear catastrophy.